


The Comforts of Home

by embroiderama



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Community: h50_flashfic, Episode Related, Homesickness, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-02
Updated: 2012-04-02
Packaged: 2017-11-02 22:52:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/374251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embroiderama/pseuds/embroiderama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What do you see, when you close your eyes and think about home?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Comforts of Home

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the [](http://h50-flashfic.livejournal.com/profile)[**h50_flashfic**](http://h50-flashfic.livejournal.com/) Comfort challenge, also the Amnesty challenge, since I was too late for the main Comfort challenge. The link takes you over there for reading.

For many, many months after he moved to Hawaii, long after the house in New Jersey had been sold, the image of _home_ in his head was still that brick Cape Cod, small and cozy with a postage-stamp sized yard that was always full of dandelions. Danny had given up his battle against the weeds when he saw how much Grace loved them; some of her first steps had been on that patch of grass, stumbling with a bright yellow flower clasped in her tiny fist.

It had taken Rachel moving to Hawaii to make him give up the struggle to keep the house. Everybody told him to let the house be sold, to split the money with Rachel and walk away, but Danny couldn't let go of the place where they'd been so happy, the only place that had felt like home since he moved out of his parents' house. He didn't want to take the house away from Grace either. Even if she wasn't living there most of the time, she still had her bedroom, still had the only home she'd ever known before the divorce. She still pulled up the dandelions and blew their seeds into the wind.

When Rachel ripped his heart out and carried it across the country and over the ocean, when Danny had no choice but to follow unless he wanted to live with a gaping hole in his chest, he sold the house to an older couple downsizing from a large house, and he saw the husband glaring at those fading dandelions like he couldn't wait to rip them up out of the soil, roots and all. Danny turned his back on the house, got on a plane to Hawaii, and he found an apartment quickly enough but it only felt like a home for the brief moments when Grace was there to bring life to his bare walls and second-hand furniture.

When he had days that sucked—when he was tired of being called a haole, and later when he was tired of Steve trying to get him killed—Danny would sit at his desk or in his car and close his eyes. _I can't wait to go home,_ he'd think, and the image in his head would be himself in his old car, pulling up in front of the little brick house with the tiny yard and the people he loved inside. Then he'd remember that he'd never have that home again, and his heart would break all over again.

~~~

Whatever definition of home he chose, South Korea was certainly the farthest from it that Danny had ever been. Sitting in his seat in the back of a military plane with Steve slumped against his side, all Danny could think was that they shouldn't be there, that Steve should be in a hospital, somewhere he could rest in sunlight with crisp white sheets and medical staff to clean him up and make sure he wasn't in the middle of bleeding to death somewhere inside his body. But Steve, for all that he could barely walk, had insisted that they get out of the country ASAP. Joe had checked him out with what looked like a practiced hand and declared Steve safe to fly, whatever that meant.

The SEALs had scrounged up some supplies, and before the plane left the ground Steve had a patch on the inside of his arm scrubbed clean with an antiseptic wipe and an IV inserted to put some fluids back in his abused body. Steve refused to lie down, and Danny had a feeling Steve could breathe better sitting up, so he'd just sat down next to Steve and motioned for Chin to rig the bag up above their heads. Hours later, somewhere over the Pacific, the bag was empty, the line disconnected from Steve's arm, but the bag was still duct taped up there, a reminder to Danny that they were headed to the hospital as soon as they landed in Oahu. 

Steve had fallen asleep shortly after they got in the air, his giddy relief and cocky assurances fading into exhaustion. Between the IV and the blankets Kono and Lori tucked around Steve, Danny thought they'd avoided letting him slip into shock, but he kept his fingers on Steve's wrist where he could feel Steve's heartbeat pulse under his skin. Steve's head was a warm weight on top of Danny's head, his unshaven chin scratching against Danny's ear, and he knew how much trust was implicit in his willingness to let go and surrender to his need to rest, his beaten body slumped against Danny's shoulder.

Danny closed his eyes, thought _I can't wait to get home,_ and for the first time the image of home that came together in his head wasn't made out of brick, didn't have a tiny yard dotted with white and yellow dandelions. The home in his mind was white on the outside, surrounded by sand with the ocean lapping just outside the windows, with sea shells to find instead of flowers. The home in his mind had Steve McGarrett inside, asleep in the bed they'd shared a few times, asleep in the bed that Danny suddenly knew should be _theirs_. Danny opened his eyes, looked down at his hand wrapped around Steve's wrist. When he closed his eyes again, Steve's house was still there.

Hours later, they were at the hospital in Honolulu; he and Kono and Chin and Lori and Joe sat in the waiting room, waiting to find out if the doctors thought Steve was as okay as he claimed to be. Kono was half-asleep with her head on Chin's shoulder, and Lori had her legs folded up under herself in a way that made Danny's knees ache just to look at. Joe sat upright, looking like he was in the seated version of parade rest, watchful waiting, and Danny both envied him the calm and hated him for it. 

He was exhausted, a headache beating behind his forehead and his eyes going fuzzy every time he stopped concentrating on being awake, but he couldn't stay seated for more than ten minutes at a time. He'd read and re-read all of the educational posters in the room and the nearby hallway, and he was seriously thinking about seeing if he could steal a lab coat and walk around the private areas of the hospital like people did on TV shows, but then the doctor finally showed his face.

They were keeping Steve overnight, which made Danny feel sick again at the thought of terrible hidden damage lurking underneath Steve's dirty, bruised skin, but then the doctor went on to explain that they needed to run a number of tests and care for his burns and abrasions, that they didn't think anything was seriously wrong, but that the tests and treatments would take some time. The doctor would allow one of them to visit Steve before they took him up to a room, and Danny followed the man, not realizing until he was halfway down the hall that he hadn't even consulted with the rest of the group about who would go.

Steve had his eyes closed when Danny stepped through the curtain around his bed, and he had another IV in his arm and a clip on his finger but he wasn't connected to anything else. Danny wrapped his fingers loosely around Steve's wrist again, and Steve opened his eyes. "Hey you," Danny said quietly.

"Hey." Steve smiled a washed-out version of his usual grin. "Paranoid doctors makin' me stay."

"Yeah they are. I'm going to hang out though, come keep you company when you're not busy being tested like a guinea pig."

"You need to get some sleep too, Danno." Steve blinked heavily, clearly ready to drop off again.

"I can sleep on the couch in the waiting room. What's the difference between one couch and another, anyway?"

Steve moved his hand, twisting it until Danny fingers, which had been around Steve's wrist, were now entwined with Steve's. "Go home," Steve said, holding his eyes open, "take a shower, sleep in the bed."

The idea sounded ridiculously good, but Danny didn't feel right about leaving Steve alone. "I should stay here, take you back to your house tomorrow."

"Danno." Steve sighed and let his eyes fall closed, though his hand holding Danny's made it clear he was still awake. He opened his eyes again and tilted his head to look at Danny directly. "Go _home_ ," he repeated, squeezing Danny's hand tight. " _Home_."

Danny's chest filled up with a wave of the love and fear he'd felt for Steve in the last 36 hours, and he squeezed Steve's hand back gently before bending down to kiss his still-dirty forehead. "I will," he answered, his voice just above a whisper. "I think I will."


End file.
